A few weeks ago, tracking for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation was supposedly in the toilet. Early reports suggested that Tom Cruise’s fifth outing as super-spy Ethan Hunt was not getting people excited. This would be the end, the experts said, of a franchise that has kept Cruise’s career surging forward for the past two decades. Well, that was apparently a big load of crap because Rogue Nation opened well and opened in the same ballpark as the rest of the franchise. Even with inflation differences, this series keeps on hitting the same box office sweet spot.

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

1

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

$56,000,000

$14,156

$56,000,000

2

Vacation

$14,850,000

$4,354

$21,172,000

3

Ant-Man

$12,619,000 (-49.3)

$3,799

$132,148,000

4

Minions

$12,200,000 (-46.8)

$3,413

$287,391,000

5

Pixels

$10,400,000 (-56.7)

$2,793

$45,611,000

6

Trainwreck

$9,700,000 (-43.9)

$3,277

$79,709,000

7

Southpaw

$7,519,000 (-55.0)

$2,712

$31,577,000

8

Paper Towns

$4,600,000 (-63.6)

$1,518

$23,816,000

9

Inside Out

$4,517,000 (-39.1)

$2,372

$329,594,000

10

Jurassic World

$3,800,000 (-47.1)

$1,987

$631,500,000

With an opening weekend of $56 million, Rogue Nation is off to a more-than-solid start. Reviews have been positive and audiences have been generally enthusiastic, so the film has a strong shot of hanging out for a good long while. The previous film broke $200 million. This one should do the same...unless it pulls a Mission: Impossible III and suddenly stops around $150 million. Still, we should underestimate Cruise at our own peril. This guy has had a long career for a good reason — his movies tend to be really, really good and audiences often catch on.

All of the headlines will be about Rogue Nation, but Vacation also opened this week and it didn’t do too hot. In the five days since its Wednesday opening, the new comedy grossed only $21 million, which is a rough start for a movie that probably wanted $30 million over the weekend alone to look like a good idea. The film could grow legs and pull people in –— after all, the dregs of August are upon us and moviegoers are about to get desperate. If Vacation is lucky, it could do some serious stretching and end up with $70-$80 million. If it’s lucky.

The holdovers ran the gamut, from Ant-Man all-but-securing $150 million by next week to Pixels plummeting to fifth place. The former has a shot at catching the first Captain America and Thor movies, while the latter will be lucky to hit $70 million. International grosses will bolster both, but only one of them is even remotely a hit.

Meanwhile, Minions continued to edge up toward $300 million, but its chances of reaching $400 million have grown increasingly thin. In the end, it should end up somewhere around $350 million, outgrossing Inside Out (which is about to exit the top 10 as a huge hit anyway) but failing to reach the heights of Despicable Me 2 or Toy Story 3.

As for the rest...

Southpaw stumbled in its second weekend, but it’s not going to embarrass itself in the end. It’ll hit $40 million and call it a day. Trainwreck continued its march to $100 million and it should get there soon enough. It should outgross Terminator Genisys by next weekend. Paper Towns failed to find that TheFault In Our Stars audience and it may end up tapping out before $30 million. That’s not good, but at least the movie was cheap.

Finally, Jurassic World is about to exit the top 10 as the third highest grossing movie of all time at the domestic box office. It’ll do so less than $30 million behind Titanic, but this thing is officially out of juice. So pour one out for Universal, who is dealing with having one of the biggest movies of all time instead of the second biggest movie of all time.